SOS Titanic by Eve Bunting

From Goodreads, 

"Fifteen-year-old Barry O'Neill, traveling from Ireland to America on the maiden voyage of the Titanic, finds his life endangered when the ship hits an iceberg and begins to sink."

Goodreads - SOS Titanic 

Awards:

• Pacific Northwest Library Association Young Reader's Choice Award for Senior - 1999

I love the Titanic and all things that pertain to it.  My best friend and I fell in love with a Titanic book in second grade... you could say it was the start of a wonderful friendship.  So naturally when I saw this book I knew I had to buy it and put it in my Titanic collection that is in my classroom.  I wanted to read the book beforehand to make sure it was suitable to put in a 4th grade classroom.  While I love the Titanic, this book was a little bit of a letdown.

The book follows Barry O'Neill as he boards the Titanic to travel to America to live with his parents.  Barry's enemies, the Flynns, are also boarding the boat, but as third class passengers.  Throughout the book Barry is trying to stay out of trouble and keep from getting thrown overboard by the two Flynn boys.  However, Barry does start to enjoy the company of Pegeen Flynn and he tries to see her as often as possible without being caught fraternizing with third class passengers.  Barry gets in a few scuffs throughout the book and at the end has to fight to survive the sinking.

This book really lacked a good storyline.  The entire book focused on Barry trying to avoid running into Frank and Jonnie Flynn, while also trying to make eyes at Pegeen Flynn.  There weren't many exciting moments in the book, and there definitely wasn't a solid storyline to follow.  I knew the entire book was leading up to the moment of the ship sinking.  That was probably the most exciting moment in the book because there was so much chaos going on.  It was also predictable at the end because I knew that Barry was going to focus on finding Pegeen and saving her.  The entire book kind of gave me the sense of reading the novel version of the movie Titanic.  Just the way that it was all laid out and presented really gave me the feeling that it was along the same storylines as the movie.

I did however enjoy the fact that Eve Bunting focused on trying to include factual information.  She did include names of people who were on the ship such as Mr.Andrews and Mr.Murdoch.  I thought that she paid attention to detail in that aspect.  I enjoy learning about the facts and events of what really happened, and I'm glad that she tried to incorporate them the best she could.

I will still add this book to my Titanic collection in my classroom, but I'm unsure if any kids will find it interesting enough to read it.  I give this book 2.5 stars out of 5.  It just didn't excite me the way that I thought it was going to.  I recommend it to anyone who is a fan of the Titanic.